I was gonna just post this in my journal b ut I thought, hey, what the hell.

I was taking a shower and thinking about RPG's. For some weird reason, I was thinking about how to apply the classic D&D classes to real-life, modern day examples. Then it drifted into a kind of urban street/crime genre thing.

Anyway...I think it would actually be playable without delving too much into Powerkill/Violence territory.

If you aren't familiar with the books, well, that didn't make a whole heck of sense. But basically, the "party paradigm" remains stable, the concept of the dungeon is changed to the criminal "underworld" and acquistion and survival remain key motivators.

Because the physical and legal consequences of unrestrained violence in the real world are so great, I'd think this would be a great opportunity to have a narrative-ist sort of game where the focus not only shouldn't, but couldn't, be on continual battles such as in most rpgs. By revolving around the underworld (where violence is at least thinkable), the game could allow character to engage in the technically illegal behavior found in most rpgs anyway. You also point out something I've always believed - that in fact real people are defined as "character classes"; we are mostly our professions with some additional "Skill points" put into hobbies or other interests.

I've wanted to work on a similar game for some time now. I know there's already one in existence, but if you're interested in tooling around with a d20 underworld/crime game, I don't know if you'd be interested in collaborating but if you were I'd be jumping up and down and waving my hand. :wink: